LITMIR.BIZ

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and if they manured heavy or trusted to phosphate, and how long the trees took before they began to bear, and if they pruned much, and if they had the same trouble we do, come harvest time, to hire hands enough to git in th' crop."

      She paused. The other woman asked, "Well, what did she say?"

      The echoes rang again to the old woman s great laugh. "We might as well ha' asked her bout the back side of th' moon! So we gave up on olives and lemons! Then Eben he asked her 'bout taxes there. Were they on land mostly and were they high and who 'sessed 'em and how 'bout school tax. Did the state pay part o' that? You see town meetin' being so all tore up every year 'bout taxes, Eben he thought 'twould be a chance to hear how other folks did, and maybe learn somethin'. Good land, Abby, I've set there and most died, trying to keep from yellin' right out with laugh to see our folks tryin' to learn somethin' 'bout foreign parts from that woman that's traveled in 'em steady for five years. I bet she was ​folded and gagged and had cotton in her ears the hull time she was there!"

      "Didn't she tell you anythin bout taxes?"

      "Taxes? You'd ha' thought 'twas bumble-bees' hind legs we was askin' 'bout! She ackshilly seemed s'prised to be asked. Land! What had she ever thought 'bout such triflin' things as taxes. She didn't know how they was taxed in Italy, or if they was … nor anywhere else. That what it come down to, every time. She didn't know! She didn't know what kind of schools they had, nor what the roads was made of, nor who made 'em. She couldn't tell you what hired men got, nor any wages, nor what girls that didn't get married did for a living, nor what rent they paid, nor how they 'mused themselves, nor how much land was worth, nor if they had factories, nor if there was any lumberin' done, nor how they managed to keep milk in such awful hot weather without ice. Honest, Abby, she couldn't even say if the houses had cellars or not. Why, it come out she never was in a real house that anybody lived in … only hotels. She hadn't got to know a single real person that b'longed there. Of course she never found out anything 'bout how they lived. Her mother was there, she said, and her aunt, and that Bilson family that comes to th' village summers, an the Goodriches an' the Phippses an' the … oh, sakes alive, you know that same old crowd that rides 'roun' here summers and thinks to be sociable by sayin' how nice an yellow your oats is blossomin'! You could go ten times 'roun' the world with them and know less 'bout what folks is like than when you started. When I heard 'bout them being there, I called Eben and Joel and Em'ly off and I says, 'Now, don't pester that ​poor do-less critter with questions any more. How much do the summer folks down to th' village know 'bout the way we live? Well, they burst out laughin', of course. 'Well, then,' I says, ''tis plain to be seen that all they do in winter is to go off to some foreign part and do the same as here, so I says to them, same's I said to you, Abby, a while back, that they'd better save their breath to cool their porridge. But it's awful solemn eatin' now, without a word spoke."

      The other woman laughed. "Why, you don't have to talk 'bout foreign parts or else keep still, do ye?"

      "Oh, it's just so 'bout everythin. We heard she'd been in Washington last winter, so Eben he brisked up and tried her on politics. Well, she'd never heard of direct primaries, they're raisin such a holler 'bout in York State; she didn't know what th' 'nsurgent senators are up to near as much as we did, and to judge by the way she looked, she'd only just barely heard of th' tariff." The word was pronounced with true New England reverence. "Then we tried bringin' up children, and lumberin' an' roads, an cookin', an' crops, an' stock, an' wages, an' schools, an gardenin , but we couldn't touch bottom nowhere. Never a word to be had out'n her. So we give up and now we just sit like stotin' bottles, an' eat—an' do our visitin' with each other odd minutes afterward."

      "Why, she don't look to be half-witted," said the other.

      "She ain't!" cried Mrs. Pritchard with emphasis. "She's got as good a headpiece, natchilly, as anybody. I remember her when she was a young one. It's the fool way they're brung up! Everythin' that's any fun or intrust, they hire somebody else to do it for 'em. Here she ​is a great strappin' woman of twenty-two or three, with nothing in the world to do but to traipse off 'cross the fields from mornin' to night—an' nobody to need her there nor here, nor anywhere. No wonder she looks peaked. Sometimes when I see her set and stare off, so sort o' dull and hopeless, I'm so sorry for her I could cry! Good land! I'd as 'lief hire somebody to chew my vittles for me and give me the dry cud to live off of, as do the way those kind of folks do."

      The distant call of a steam-whistle, silvered by the great distance into a flute-like note, interrupted her. "That's the milk-train, whistling for the Millbrook crossin'," she said. "We must be thinkin' of goin' home before long. Where be those young ones?" She raised her voice in a call as unexpectedly strong and vibrant as her laugh. "Susie! Eddie! Did they answer? I'm gittin' that hard o' hearin' 'tis hard for me to make out."

      "Yes, they hollered back," said the other. "An' I see 'em comin' through the pasture yonder. I guess they got their pails full by the way they carry 'em."

      "That's good," said Mrs. Pritchard with satisfaction. "They can get twenty-five cents a quart hulled, off'n summer folks. They're savin up to help Joel go to Middletown College in the fall."

      "They think a lot o' Joel, don't they?" commented the other.

      "Oh, the Pritchards has always been a family that knew how to set store by their own folks," said the old woman proudly, "and Joel he'll pay em back as soon as he gets ahead a little."

      The children had evidently now come up, for Virginia heard congratulations over the berries and exclamations ​over their sun-flushed cheeks. "Why, Susie, you look like a pickled beet in your face. Set down, child, an cool off. Grandma called you an' Eddie down to tell you an old-timey story."

      There was an outbreak of delighted cries from the children and Mrs. Pritchard said deprecatingly, "You know, Abby, there never was children yet that wasn't crazy bout old-timey stories. I remember how I used to hang onto Aunt Debby's skirts and beg her to tell me some more.

      "The story I'm goin to tell you is about this Great-aunt Debby," she announced formally to her auditors, "when she was 'bout fourteen years old and lived up here in this very house, pretty soon after th' Rev'lution. There was only just a field or two cleared off round it then, and all over th' mounting the woods were as black as any cellar with pines and spruce. Great-aunt Debby was the oldest one of five children and my grandfather—your great-great-grandfather—was the youngest. In them days there wa'n't but a few families in the valley and they lived far apart, so when Great-aunt Debby's father got awful sick a few days after he'd been away to get some grist ground, Aunt Debby's mother had to send her 'bout six miles through th' woods to the nearest house—it stood where the old Perkins barn is now. The man come back with Debby, but as soon as he saw great-grandfather he give one yell—'smallpox!'—and lit out for home. Folks was tur'ble afraid of it then an' he had seven children of his own an' nobody for 'em to look to if he died, so you couldn't blame him none. They was all like that then, every fam'ly just barely holdin' on, an' scratchin for dear life.

      ​"Well, he spread the news, and the next day, while Debby was helpin' her mother nurse her father the best she could, somebody called her over toward th' woods. They made her stand still 'bout three rods from 'em and shouted to her that the best they could do was to see that the fam'ly had vittles enough. The neighbors would cook up a lot and leave it every day in the fence corner and Debby could come and git it.

      "That was the way they fixed it. Aunt Debby said they was awful faithful and good 'bout it and never failed, rain or shine, to leave a lot of the best stuff they could git in them days. But before long she left some of it there, to show they didn't need so much, be cause they wasn't so many to eat.

      "First, Aunt Debby's father died. Her mother and she dug the grave in th' corner of th' clearin', down there where I'm pointin'. Aunt Debby said she couldn't never forget how her mother looked as she said a prayer before they shoveled the dirt back in. Then the two of 'em took care of the cow and tried to get in a few garden seeds while they nursed one of the children—the boy that was next to Debby. That turned out to be smallpox, of course, and he died and they buried him alongside his father. Then the two youngest girls, twins they was, took sick, and before they died Aunt Debby's mother fell over in a faint while she was tryin'

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